DIEZ'S ETYMOLOGISCHES WORTERBUCH. 399 



Trou. The word trabucar in Prove^al seems to be a mili- 

 tary one. It is constantly used in the " War against the^Albi- 

 genses" for battering or breaching with a trabs, or in the Italian 

 form trabocco. Trabuca is therefore probably the breach made 

 with this instrument, and the Italian buco is probably a cor- 

 ruption from hence and not a German word. 



Nebli. As the Arabic derivation seems to be a failure, why 

 should it not come from milvius ? The change of m into n, of 

 v into b, and of the place of the liquid^ are all matters of frequent 

 occurrence in Spanish. Perhaps we ought to assume a diminu- 

 tive form milvillus, the final I being lost with the shifting back 

 of the accent. 



Calibre. The word is principally used, speaking of the bore 

 of a cannon, or the diameter of a column ; but it has another 

 meaning which must be the original one. The word is used by 

 masons, carpenters and workers in metal, for the tool or model 

 which goes round anything and enables them to see if it be of 

 the right size; its form, &c. vary in different cases, but it is 

 always something that embraces or clips what it is applied to. 

 It therefore seems clear that calibre is simply clipper, the latter 

 word being borrowed from England or Holland, for I do not 

 know that it exists in modern German. If a Frenchman pro- 

 nounced clipper half a dozen times it would run into something 

 not to be distinguished from calibre. Compare the English 

 word caliper, and canif from knife; two things of the same size 

 are said to be of the same calibre, because they would fit the 

 same ; and hence the other sense of the word, which there is no 

 occasion to derive from the Arabic. 



Caviar, l&avidpi, is certainly not a Greek word. I imagine 

 the Greeks intended the four vowels to represent the full sound 

 of the Italian or Provencal u, and that the word was originally 

 curee or curata, meaning simply cured roe. When it came to 

 the West from Greece, the perplexing number of vowels caused 

 the hardening of the u into v. Compare, for an analogous change 

 of a travelled word, the French word fashion derived from/a^ora. 



